This past Thanksgiving my daughters insisted that I join the Facebook world. We spent a tortuous couple of hours going through the protocol of FB, we explored all the benefits, then we went through the part that intimidated me from the beginning.."accepting" or "ignoring" friends. This exercise was excruciating. So until this past week I was not overwhelmed with posts, nor felt the compulsion to respond to very many.
Then I accepted a friendship offer from a girl I knew in high school. She apparently has kept up with everybody, while I have kept up with no one..intentionally. There is a small streak of my dad in me. He refuses to look back. The afternoon of my mom's funeral he encouraged the daughter and D-i-Ls to go through mom's stuff and get what they want because the rest is being donated. We have always joked that Dad should not be the one to decide how long we stay on life support, after all Kiwanis will not wait. There is a little of this in me and high school was one of those events that was fine, but I never looked back and didn't keep up with the folks once I was gone.
As I mentioned above the girl from high school was someone I knew, but didn't really run around with. I have no real inclinations either way, but on a whim I accepted the offer of "friends" and thought no more about it. A day or two later when I checked FB, Holy Cow! There were 53 folks wanting to "befriend" me. I was a jokester in high school and we all had a lot of laughs, but in the intervening years I have become less so and I'm sure all these people are the same. Besides, even with the maiden name listed in the request, I didn't even KNOW half these people. Now I am revisiting the angst from Thanksgiving about who is in and who is out. This is stressful.
Now I have discovered that some of these people (specifically the women) have stayed in touch all these years. So as these posts pop up on my FB page there are all sorts of inside jokes, shared trauma, accomplishments, disappointments, illness, long-distant moves, and even deaths that I have suddenly parachuted into the middle of. It is a little disconcerting to suddenly be thrown into this 40 year reconnect with no knowledge of the intervening years. So will my way of joking be acceptable? (sometimes it comes across as a little sarcastic..when it is really just very cerebral) Do I want to attempt to catch them up on my journey? Probably not. And now I learn there is this whole 40-year-reunion talk for next year. Hmmm. I am bringing about a pound a year to the event over high school. Yeah, this is going to go well.
My bride keeps pointing out that FB is responsible for a lot of marriage breakups. I have given up trying to explain to her that if there are any of the girls left from high school who have any interest in me, my interest in them has been long gone from the first time I spotted her in Abilene all those years ago at ACU. She captured my heart and holds it to this day. Besides, breaking up was really not my specialty back in those days, so unless they are looking for revenge, she has nothing to fear.
For now it is a wait and see deal on FB. I accepted them all..it was easier than trying to remember who they all were. As a plus, one of the girls I was in choir with sent me a picture of me and a couple of other guys in the Senior Musical from the article in the paper. I am trying to figure out how to print this from FB, it is cool to see how much change has happened, hair, weight, and the silver tooth is gone. I am also being told that I can "hide" either from these folks or them from me. Facebook, the new social conscience.
Godspeed to all you travelers on the virtual highway. It may seem like nothing has changed, but I am here to tell you that, judging from the picture I received a lot has changed.
Don
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